Man Calls Police as Comedian's 'Middle East' Jokes Make Him Feel 'Uncomfortable'
Comedy club audience member calls 911 over jokes about terrorism
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A comedy club audience member dialed 911 and called the police when a comedian's jokes about the Middle East made him feel "uncomfortable."
Emergency services were called by a Florida man to investigate comedian Ahmed Ahmed because the man, who was watching the show with his wife, felt his jokes about terrorism were in poor taste.
Ahmed, an Egyptian-American, was performing at the Off the Hook Comedy Club in Naples, Florida when he made the joke.
After the bizarre police call, the club posted a video of the joke on Facebook.
"Clap if you're from the Middle East," Ahmed said, which evoked applause from a few in the audience.
"All right. We got a handful of us in here, nice," he responded.
"But, hey, it only takes one of us... to tell a joke," he said.
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That was enough for a man in the audience to think law enforcement involvement was warranted.
The Collier County Sheriff's Department later released the audio of the call to the public.
Ahmed said that the police were very cordial when they spoke to him about the call.
"They couldn't have been nicer," he said, adding that one of them remarked to him, "Don't change anything, keep doing what you're doing."
"That was refreshing to hear," Ahmed said.
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The man who called the police said that he had been given free tickets to the show.
"I've told that joke about 1,000 times around the world," Ahmed said to ABC News.
"Whatever he heard and what I said are two different things."
Several states, including Michigan and New York, are considering legislation that would make it a crime to make racially motivated calls to police without evidence of malice from the person being called about.
